Search Engine Personalization: Growing, but Still Weak

[Chris Sherman]

"Personalized" search is hot. In the past weeks, we've seen Amazon's a9.com and Ask Jeeves' beta of MyJeeves launch with some interesting search history and content saving features. We've also seen Looksmart acquire Furl, a nifty web page clipping service that let's you create your own searchable "personal web."

Today we have the launch of My Yahoo Search which allows you to tweak and save Yahoo search results in a similar way to MyJeeves.

While it's great to see all of this interest in personalizing search, these efforts all seem timid and don't offer many really compelling reasons to use them. In today's SearchDay article, Yahoo Introduces Personal Search, I describe the new service, and why I probably won't be using it until the inevitable enhancements appear in the future.

Danny also weighs in with an article for Search Engine Watch members, Search Personalization: A Marketer's Perspective, where he provides tips for search marketers on preparing for the coming of personalized search results, including a close-up look at how the My Yahoo Search "Block Site" feature works.

Anyone else using these new services? Comments? Criticisms? Suggestions? Remember, search engine reps read these boards and welcome constructive commentary. Post away!

Chris

[rustybrick]

I personally feel personalize search should be an option and continue to be that way. Will it ever be 'stronger' then standard search? By that, I think stronger means that it will be utilized more.

I don't use many personalized search services. I am not sure if I want to see different results than the average Joe. Its been talked about for a while now, still waiting to see what will happen.

[rustybrick]

Oh,

Originally Posted by Chris Sherman

Today we have the launch of My Yahoo Search which allows you to tweak and save Yahoo search results in a similar way to MyJeeves.

I believe the link is http://mysearch.yahoo.com/ not http://my.yahoo.com/

[Brad]

Anyone else using these new services? Comments? Criticisms? Suggestions? Remember, search engine reps read these boards and welcome constructive commentary. Post away!

I keep trying to use the personalized searches, but frankly they never quite take. Ask still has too many PPC ads in the SERPs, I always seem to be not logged in to A9 when I search so there goes the personalization (besides it is just reheated Google.)

Heck I'm having more fun "personalizing" Clusty.com tabs, specifying the engines and directories I want, than I have ever had with the searches that try to remember search histories and stuff.

[rcjordan]

VCR/DVD Whistles & Bells: Growing, but Still Weak

[DaveN]

think about the data they could capture like how many times a site has been blocked

DaveN

[seomike]

Another cool function would be a memory freeze on the SERPS. That way if the rankings change when you called up the search from memory they would be how they were before any change.